P#20 Q1C: Understanding the Photographic Frame and How It Applies to Your Ability to See Creatively

When Limitations Are a Good Thing

Bryan Peterson: Photographers have an advantage. Much like a painter, photographers have a predetermined frame that they work within. Think of it like a canvas. You can only paint within the parameters of that canvas. If you go off the canvas, the paint has nothing to attach itself to. Likewise when you photograph, you're literally resigned to working within those very strong, defined, predetermined borders of the photographic frame.

I'm saying that this is an advantage for several reasons. Let's take, for instance, someone who is working with stone or metal or art. There's nothing predetermined, so to speak. You could take a 300 pound piece of granite and end up with a cue ball by the time you're done.

On that same note, if you have a 300 pound piece of granite that you have got to photograph, then you really have no options but to figure out a way to fit that 300 pound piece of granite inside the photographic frame.

This isn't like milk spilling on the table. When you spill milk on a table, unless you grab the roll of paper towels, it's going to not only go across the table but off the edges as well and continue onto the floor.

You can't possibly spill milk in a photographic frame because the edges will contain it no matter what. As a result of that, it's both welcome and a challenge.

You will certainly have limitations, like it or not, of what you can and can't put inside that frame. This is a common complaint that I'll hear from students. They'll want to get a whole lot more inside that frame than what they're allowed. They don't quite know how to do that yet.

That's something I just wanted to stress. As far as the recognition that goes into the so-called art of seeing, one needs to recognize that you are limited to a rectangle.

In Closing

While some artists may feel that having a set area to work within would be a disadvantage, Bryan Peterson also sees it as an advantage. Working within a photographic frame gives you a set of parameters to work within, making it easier to compose your shot.